


To The Night

by Cipher_Is_My_Waifu



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Kinda depressing at the start, Less so as it goes on, Swearing, rick and stan a hundred years!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 20:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8117299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cipher_Is_My_Waifu/pseuds/Cipher_Is_My_Waifu
Summary: Trying to drink away his worries in a cheap, sleazy bar, Stanley Pines finds himself running into a strangely familiar face, and winds up making a new friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> *rises from the grave of long-dead fandoms past* Hoooolyyyy shit! Over six years since my last posted fanfic, and Gravity Falls has managed to drag me back down into fandom hell. What is my life. Oh well. Enjoy if you bother reading past this part; hopefully I'm not too rusty!
> 
> It's a good deal shorter than what I usually like to post, and less than half of what I've got written of a horribly disgusting and disturbing Billford oneshot that still isn't done, but whatever. My cat woke me up at two in the morning, the thought of Rick having a brother popped into my head, and I couldn't go back to sleep until I'd at least started writing. Whatever. I don't have work today, so I can run on as little sleep as I want.
> 
> Also, I know we saw Rico in Dreamscaperers, and am thus aware that he looks nothing like Rick, buuuuut it's my fanfic, my rules.

Stanley Pines sits on a grimy bar stool, slowly nursing a glass of bourbon, and sighs. Twenty-four years old, a month shy of twenty-five, with no money, no apartment, and as of today, one year out of Colombia. How has his life come to this? Drinking away cash he doesn't have, so he can manage to sleep in a car that he’s still amazed was never reported stolen by his parents, so he'll have the energy to peddle his shitty products to a bunch of unsuspecting idiots, so he can afford to drink more tomorrow.

He sighs again, burying his face in a hand. Maybe if he hadn't crossed Rico back in prison, if he hadn't given names to get out sooner, he could still have some decent income. The unstable junkie might be out by now, as unnerving a thought it was, and back to doing his business. Drug running had been awful, and terrifying, but it had kept his bills paid and his stomach full.

Hell, while he was going down the what-if road, why not go all the way? What if he hadn't broken his brother’s invention? What if he'd told him what happened in time for it to be fixed, or at least before he left to show it to those big-headed college guys? What if he hadn't screwed up everything he'd ever tried to do; hell, what if he'd never been born at all. Ugh. He needs to stop drinking; it always sends him down these awful thought spirals.

The door to the bar swings open with a loud squeak of protest, and a tall, lanky man takes the seat next to Stan’s, immediately ordering and tossing down a shot of liquor. Stan glances up for a moment before turning his attention back to his own glass. He blinks, and turns back to the frighteningly familiar man in slowly-dawning horror.

Greasy blue-black hair, around six feet tall, and not an inch of muscle or fat to speak of. Rico? Here? _Now_? Stan’s breathing rapidly now, wondering why Rico would just sit down next to him without so much as a word. There’s zero chance he doesn’t recognize him, even from behind, and he doesn't do subtle, or slow; he just walks in with a gun and shoots narcs point blank in the back of the head without the chance for them to even know what’s happening, so why, what is he  doing, what’s his game, why -

“The hell’re you staring for, man? S-see something ya like?” The man throws back his second shot, quickly motioning to the bartender for another and turning to meet Stan's gaze. Looking at the man's face, Stan relaxes, although his heart continues pounding wildly in his chest. The nose is wrong, he realises, and there are no scars crisscrossing his skin. It’s not Rico at all, but he does look terrifyingly like him.

“No, I just...I thought you were someone else. You look familiar.” He pauses. “Y’don’t have a...a brother or somethin’, do ya?”

The stranger lets out a bark of laughter. “Oh shit, I get it. H-how much d’you owe him?” He swallows the next round with a wet belch.

Stan blinks in surprise as the man flags the bartender again, requesting another two shots and sliding one over to him. “I don't...no money, man. But, uh...he's kind’ve maybe still in a jail cell in Colombia, and I'm...not.” He wraps his fingers around the glass, but doesn't lift it front the bar.

Suddenly the man throws his head back and laughs long and loud. “Oh SHIT, n-now I really get it!” he crows, slamming a hand down on the counter. “No wonder you looked like you were g-gonna shit yourself when I, when I sat down!” He lifts his shotglass into the air, motioning for Stan to do the same. “N-name’s Rick. Drink up, buddy.”

Stan chuckles, lifting his shot in return. Both men throw their drinks back in tandem. “Stanley,” he replies after slamming the empty glass back down on the bar. “So, you guys twins?” Rick gives a quick nod. “Rick and Rico, huh? Bet you guys loved your parents for that one.” Conversation with a stranger and a free shot was just what he needed to lift his mood, and Stan was feeling better already. Vodka was a much better friend to his emotions than whiskey, but that damned bourbon was always just so tempting.

Rick chuckles, wobbling slightly on his stool. “Y-yeah. Dear old Daddy wasn't expecting me to, to be tagging along, and I-I guess he wasn’ feeling too creative.” He glances sidelong at the Jersey native. “Y'seem less confused by that then m-mosta the fucks I've known.”

Stan gives a slight nod, quirking his eyebrow with a smirk and lifting his abandoned bourbon back to his lips. “I, uh...I actually have a twin brother, too,” he admits, murmuring into the rim of his glass. Moses, how long has it been since he’s talked about his brother to...well, to anyone? “Pops had a name all picked out and ready for him. Stanford. So I, uh. I get it.” He swallows the last of the amber liquid with a slight shiver. He hasn’t said his brother’s name out loud in so long, and it tastes like ash coming out of his lungs. He frowns. Since when does he wax all poetic-like; that was always Ford’s thing.

Rick laughs again, tossing a handful of bills onto the counter and rising from his stool. “Oh man. I, I feel ya. C’mon, let's go hit the town. It's Rick and Stanl’y t’night, bab- hon- baby!” He stumbles slightly as he pulls Stan to his feet, throwing a long, skinny arm around his shoulders and steering him towards the door. “Let's go get plastered!”

Stan laughs too now, leaning into the tall, scrawny man beside him. “Y’know, we ARE at a bar,” he grumbles, pushing the door open with one hand, the other landing itself at Rick’s waist. “But whatever, man. To the night!” He gives a loud, whooping cheer, throwing a fist into the air.

Rick cheers too, mirroring Stan's punch towards the sky. “Rick and Stan, f’r a hundred years!” he yells towards the sky, pulling a flask from his coat and taking a long drink. (“Stan an’ Rick til’ the end of time!”, Stanley howls.) After a moment, he holds the flask to Stan's face, and the brunet wraps his lips around the opening. Rick tips the liquid down his throat, too quickly, and Stan chokes, coughing the burning liquid down onto his shirt.

Both men just laugh loud and long, stumbling down the street. It’s nearing three in the morning by the time they come staggering back, Stan having lost his shoes at some point in the night and Rick wearing a coat he’d snatched out of some ritzy storefront, laughing and singing off-key showtunes for the hell of it, supporting each other’s weight and falling into the El Diablo parked on the street. Stan squints up at a sign posting the area’s rules regarding parking, and determines that the risk of ruining his baby around a tree is greater than that of getting a ticket, and settles back in the driver’s seat with a yawn. He reclines the seat as far as it’ll go, glancing up at a photo clipped onto the visor before turning to his new buddy.

Rick is already fast asleep in the passenger seat, not having bothered to lean it back at all. His head lolls onto his chest, a small trail of drool and vomit hanging from his lips. He’s snoring loudly, and Stan laughs to himself before looking back up at his brother’s face from almost ten years ago. “Check iddout, Six’r,” he slurs, letting his eyes slip closed. “Made a new friend. ‘E’s like me; godda twin an’ everthing. All th’ science shit he talks ‘bout, though...reminds mea’ you, too.” It’s getting hard to stay awake now, but on the nights he needs to talk to his brother, he fights the urge to sleep for as long as possible. Tonight, though, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to for long, if at all, really. “...Miss you.”

In a few hours, Stanley will wake up to a cop pounding on his window and Rick screaming still-half-drunken abuse at what he affectionately calls the “fat bureaucratic pig fucker” giving them their wake-up call, and they’ll get to spend several more hours together in a drunk tank. Right now, though, he sleeps deeply, dreaming of days spent on the beach with his best friend blurring together with the man next to him in his car.

**Author's Note:**

> I think there's a good chance I'll write more of this, but I don't know if I would add chapters here or start a oneshot series. Whatever. Please leave some feedback if you read this far; I'm still not sure whether I really like or dislike how this came out overall. Gonna go have brownies and Pepsi for breakfast now, because I am an adult and can make as many poor life decisions in one day as I want.


End file.
